(written on the 3rd and 6th from notes taken previously)
It was cold last night again. Did I remember to reduce my layers? I think so? But maybe I didn’t reduce them enough?
I don’t remember. 🙃
I definitely didn’t get enough sleep, but that’s ok.
Today was… great. 😊 My days just keep getting better and better, and I’m grateful. 🙏¹
I’m letting go of fear (miraculously, honestly) and once again focusing my perspective on the deepest desires of my heart.
I’m focusing outward.
🥰
Yay!!! 🙃
I spent time in prayer this morning, working on my 5x5s (working on the inside of my van), and I even got out my guitar to try to learn some uplifting music. 😲
The very first thing I do when I wake up, generally, is turn on some uplifting music, and I thought, hmmm, I might as well try and learn some uplifting music. 🙃
That might be too much. I want to be doing quantitatively productive things every waking moment (well, spending time one-on-one with somebody isn’t the most quantitatively measurable action, and that’s my favorite of everything, but I think hopefully I’m at least getting across how my brain works).
But! I don’t need to be doing brain intensive things every moment, or I’m just going to get brain tired and burnout.
That’s what generally happens. I try to turn everything that I do, even my leisure into something quantifiably productive.
Then, eventually, it doesn’t perform the needed role of mental rest. It simply adds one more goal that I’m trying to accomplish.
Not good for mental health. 😅
Anyway, I’ll play it by ear and see how it goes.
Today was pretty exciting in that I was quite energetic all day long, despite the lack of sleep. I was positive and upbeat and cheerful.
It was great. 😊
I feel like the darkness is getting further and further behind me. Of course, my own experience tells me that my own poorly chosen, even unreasonable expectations (or perhaps too powerfully held onto hopes) are generally the catalyst to the darkness returning when an expectation is unmet or a hope is dashed.
To steal from AA, the “stinkin’ thinkin'” that I’ve got to be vigilant against.
Against… does that work after “vigilant”?
I did the dishes this morning and cleaned up a little bit to try to lighten the load for Heather and Hans. They have altogether too much on their plates, so wherever I can help, I want to.
I know what it’s like to be buried seemingly under a mountain of different important things, each one as complicated and road blocked as the next.
It’s exhausting, discouraging, demoralizing.
As I worked, I tried to refresh my memory on scriptures that I once had memorized–specifically a handful of versus from Alma 29. They were good reminders for me.
It’s amazing how when I fill my life with light, the darkness flees. Who knew? 🙃
I noticed that Zora had a sore on her back that was a bit swollen. She’s got super thick hair, so it’s not the easiest to find unless you’re looking for it. When I saw the sore, I think I touched near it? and some pus came out. I didn’t even have to push very hard: it was just ready to come out, so I decided to try and clean it out as best I could.
Boy that dog is such a trooper. 💪
Anyway, I started squeezing the sore over and over again from different angles, and out came this super thick cottage cheese pus.
Yuck. 😝
Heather had already cleaned it out at least once, but it had come back, so it was time to clean it out again
Zora took it like a champ, and only winced I think maybe once or twice, and I got everything out that I could. Then I grabbed my little handheld cordless hair clippers and shaved the patch next to the sore and put some hand sanitizer on it.
Don’t know if that’s the best thing to put on it, but it always seems to work for me. 😅
In other news, neighbor Otto had asked me yesterday if I might be able to help with his old dump truck. I guess the gas tank is so rusty that on the drive from the place he bought it to his house, he had to stop three times to clean out the fuel filter. 😬
So I got his phone number and messaged him to see if there was a time that I could swing by today to take a look at it. He’s just a few houses over, but a few houses is like 20 acres away. 🙃
What else, I did a little bit of protein research (how much protein I should be taking in each day). Pretty much everybody has something different to say. 🙃
Most of the reputable health institutions say that at a bare minimum, you need 0.8 g of protein per gram of body weight. But I’m also in the aging category, between 40 and 50 years old, so I need a little bit more (1 to 1.2 grams), and then I’m wanting to exercise fairly regularly, so that puts me at 1 to 1.5.
It would be even more if I were a serious weightlifter or trainer of some significant sporting event, but I’m not. So I’m going to go with the 1.5 grams per kilogram (126 grams).
I get most of my daily protein from pea protein powder, and I’ve got myself alarms set up (they alert me with the sound of water pouring into a glass 🙃). So, five alarms a day, and that helps me both stay hydrated (probably 16-20 oz of water with each 24-gram serving of protein powder and properly proteined. 😁
I also spent some time today getting the registration tags renewed for my Happy, but the renewal process wasn’t clear as to which address my renewal tags were going to go to. It had a place for the home address and a place for renewal reminders to go to if different, but no indication as to which of those addresses the actual stickers were going to be sent to.
It would seem reasonable to assume that they’d go to where the reminder letters are sent, but… it wasn’t clear.
Additionally, when I finish the payment process, instead of being taken to a confirmation page, I was taken to a page that was a 500 error page.
Not very confidence boosting. 😅
I did get a text message alert that a payment had gone through on my credit card, and I got the confirmation email, so that was good at least, but the confirmation page never went through, so I wasn’t confident that their system had received the information from me as needed.
So I fired off an email both requesting confirmation that everything had gone through on their end and requesting that they let me know which address the actual renewal tags were going to go to. I also suggested/requested that they change the verbiage on the website to indicate where the actual tags themselves were for maximum clarity.
I’m grateful to at least have the process started if it’s not already complete 🙏², and hopefully I’ll get confirmation soon both of the completion of the process and the confirmation of delivery location.
🤞
The experience, although not smooth by any means, gives me an opportunity to make a reasonable effort and simply let go instead of worrying about it.
I’m grateful for those opportunities. 🙏³ There’s so much in life that I can’t control. I can only do what I can do, and I’d like to better learn to let the stress of the things that I can’t control dwindle down to nothing.
I took some time today to bring up an idea with Heather and Hans that I’ve had ever since I first moved to Hot Springs last year–a courier/delivery business.
Hot Springs is a bit of a depressed town in some sense, as it’s a very small population town (about 3,600 people in the middle of nowhere with the nearest town big enough for a Walmart, for example, being an hour away from town and an hour and 15 minutes from where we live). Wages for local jobs are pretty cruddy unless you’re in the booming construction business. But the construction is pretty much all happening outside of town and is from people moving to the area who have money, I think.
Anyway, the short of it is despite it being a fairly depressed town in terms of wages and economy, prices for food are super duper high, and other necessities (such as wanting/needing to go to a Home Depot or Sam’s club, etc, are $15-$60 in had and half your day in time away).
So… why not start a delivery business that costs people the price of gas and vehicle wear and tear and saves them their time!?
So I explained my idea to Heather and Hans, and we chatted about it for a bit. Hopefully, it could be a good means of income for Heather and Hans, if interest level from the locals is what I’m thinking it could be?
🤞
Anyway, I also managed to get all of the last of my New Zealand drip photos transferred from my phone to my computer and also deleted a massive number of photos from my phone to make room, as I’ve had to delete several apps in order to continue taking pictures and videos and what not (as I think I mentioned in my journal entry trying to take video of the stunning reflection views of the Tetons on Jackson Lake.
Now my computer is telling me that it’s running low on memory. 😆
It’s on my to-do list to finish that process of consolidating and backing up all my files that I started doing last summer when I realized I was missing so. many. important. files.
I’ll get there. 😊
While Hans napped (neither Heather nor Hans get much sleep at all 😞), Heather and I wandered over to the house build project, and spent a bunch of time chatting about potential ideas for the house that might provide a hybrid approach that would allow for saving both flexibility and reducing the consequences of less-than-ideal circumstances.
That’s exciting. 😁 🙏⁴
I was happy to find that when she and I got back to the trailer, Hans had been playing with numbers in a spreadsheet he had created to war-game through the feasibility of starting the delivery business (which I’ve temporarily given the name Rapid Deliveries).
What else… I spent some time trying to fix the kitchen faucet. It’s one of those where you can pull the end of the faucet out as a sprayer, but because of the hard water, there’s lots and lots of mineral buildup on the inside that doesn’t allow the buttons to pop back out like they should, so once you set it to spray, unless you manually pull the button back out, even if you press the other button, it just stays on spray instead of going back to regular aerated water.
It took me awhile to figure out how to get the faucet head off, and I spent a good little while cleaning off mineral deposits, but I couldn’t find any way to confidently disassemble the head. I learned online that you can just soak them in white vinegar, so I put some white vinegar in a little glass and submerged the head in it.
Hopefully, that’ll do the trick. 🤞
While working on all the other stuff, neighbor Otto had replied back, so I headed over to his place to take a look at the dump truck gas tank. I let him know that I have a bad back and wouldn’t be able to work on it anyway for probably 2 or 3 weeks because I was headed right back out of town, but he wasn’t worried about the time, and he said he could have someone to help with it, so I might be able to help him when I get back.
I ended up staying and chatting with him for a good little while about his house as he showed me around all of the efforts that he’s gone through while I was gone. Beautiful house.
Big. 🙃
Somebody in the local neighborhood had brought in some pigeons from out of town to teach his dogs how to hunt, and what used to be two pigeons is now a flock of maybe a dozen to 20 that have taken up residence mostly at his place.
There’s poo, absolutely everywhere. All over his construction building materials. All over the inside of his airplane hanger.
Good golly.
It’s another one of those circumstances in life where you hate killing things, but they never used to be pigeons in this part of the area, and now they’re multiplying like rabbits. 😒
What do you do?
I took the opportunity while chatting with him to ask him how often he needed to go up to Rapid City, what for, and if it would be worth it to him to have a delivery service that cost $50 for a delivery, so he didn’t have to use his time going up there, and he figured that it cost him between $40 and $60 in fuel just for the drive itself each time he goes, and that it would totally be worth it to pay someone else to deliver if it meant he didn’t have to go himself.
That’s one potential customer… and right on our street. 😎
As I was driving back from his place, I noticed the lights in our next door neighbor’s place shut off just as I was driving by, so I stopped to say hello to neighbor Darren, as I hadn’t seen him since I left last year. He gave me a tour of his place and everything that he’s been doing since I left.
Pretty cool stuff. He showed me the wiring that he did himself in his house, and it’s so well done and so pretty that in some ways it’s a shame to cover it up with sheetrock!
I was super duper impressed, but I didn’t have my phone with me to take a picture, so maybe he’ll send me some.
While getting the tour of all of the updates to Darren’s house and hanger, I took the time to ask him as well about his driving habits up to Rapid and if it would be worth it to him to have a delivery service bring him stuff. I think he figured that he probably spent 40 or 50 bucks just in fuel to go up there, and it seemed like he might also be interested as well.
So maybe two potential customers? 🙃
It’s a careful balance to gauge interest without allowing there to be any pressure whatsoever.
Don’t want to pressure anybody, especially neighbors or family who might feel an obligation to say yes.
Back at the house, we spent some more time talking about delivery ideas. Then we listened to a great talk by Elder Eiring, yacked for a little bit, prayed, and called it a night.
Back inside my van, I spent a little time cleaning up, a little time looking up guitar chords and tablature for hymns, journaled, prayed, and crashed for the night.
Great day. Super nice to be pumped up and rearin’ to go. Very grateful. 🙏⁴
Been a long time. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 